Obesity and Pharmacokinetic Variability: Implications for Cardiovascular Therapeutics

Obesity, especially moderate-to-severe obesity, is strongly associated with multimorbidity, especially cardiovascular diseases, and polypharmacy. Patients with moderate to severe obesity are under-represented in large trials, so current dosing strategies are largely extrapolated from populations without obesity. Moderate and severe obesity induce complex and dynamic alterations in the gastrointestinal tract, liver and kidneys, which may affect a drug's pharmacokinetic actions of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. Drug distribution and exposure may also differ based on lipophilicity. Multimorbid patients with obesity and cardiovascular disease are frequently prescribed polypharmacy. Polypharmacy increases the risk of pharmacokinetic-based drug-drug interactions often mediated by the cytochrome P450 enzymes, whose activity can be modified by obesity. Therefore, drug response can be highly and unpredictably variable. New incretin-based therapies can affect the pharmacokinetics of orally co-administered drugs by modifying the gastrointestinal physiology. We review obesity-related pharmacokinetic changes, focusing on common cardiovascular medications. A pragmatic, personalised approach is proposed to reduce variability in response, which may ultimately improve safety and effectiveness.